A master's hand

摘要

Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) have a wide material palette―the studio is not yet wed to a "signature" material. They are too engaged with explorations to be aligned with any one material. What is remarkable, however, is how they are pushing the limits of fabric in a range of building types and fabric applications. Their diverse, inventive use of fabric almost makes it their signature material. Fabric innovation is evident in OMA's first widely publized projects from the late 1990s―the Maison a Bordeaux, designed to accommodate a wheelchair-confined client. Koolhaas describes the building as three houses because it has three separate sections layered on top of one another. The lowest part, Koolhaas says, is "a series of caverns carved out from the hill for the most intimate life of the family." The middle section is a smaller 3 x 3.5m (10 by 10.75 ft.) glass room where the wheelchair- bound resident has his private living area; the entire room is an elevator platform which rises and lowers to other house levels. The upper section, which Koolhaas calls the "top house," has separate areas for the husband and wife and for their children.